Nadia Plays the Violin

The Luthier's Apprentice

Chapter 25: Nadia Plays the Violin

Giovanni held the violin by the neck, the scroll pointing toward the ceiling, the body hanging, the varnish catching the July light from the open windows, and he held it out to her.

The gesture was simple. The arm extended, the hand offering, the instrument between them. The gesture was the oldest gesture of the workshop, the gesture of the maker presenting the instrument to the player, the gesture that was the purpose of all the months, all the wood, all the carving and the bending and the gluing and the varnishing, the months distilled into this gesture, the extended arm, the offered instrument.

Nadia looked at the violin. She looked at it and the looking was a reckoning, a summing, a gathering of everything the year had contained into this single moment in the workshop on Via Palazzo on a July morning when the air was warm and the windows were open and the street outside was quiet in the summer way that Italian streets are quiet in the heat of the day, the shutters closed, the shops dark, the city retreating from the sun into the cool interiors, and the workshop was a cool interior, the stone walls holding the night's temperature, and the violin was in Giovanni's hand, and Giovanni was holding it out to her.

She took it. She took the violin from Giovanni's hand and the taking was the receiving, the receiving that was the playing's prerequisite, the instrument passing from the maker's hand to the player's hand, the passage the transfer, the transfer the purpose.

The violin was light. Lighter than the violins she had played in Cleveland, lighter than her own instrument, the instrument that was in its case in a storage unit in Cleveland Heights, the instrument she had not touched in twenty-two months, the instrument that she paid sixty dollars a month to store in a climate-controlled unit, the storing a commitment she could not explain, the commitment to an object she could not use, the commitment the last thread connecting her to the life she had left.

Giovanni's violin was lighter because the graduation was thinner, the plates carved to a lesser thickness, the lesser thickness producing a more responsive instrument, an instrument that vibrated more freely, that converted more of the string's energy into sound, that was more efficient, and the efficiency was the craft, the efficiency the product of the precise graduation that Giovanni had spent weeks carving, the graduation that Nadia had measured with calipers, the 2.8 at the center, the 2.2 at the edges, the precision the efficiency, the efficiency the lightness.

She held the violin by the neck with her left hand. The neck was smooth, the varnish satin-finished, the surface providing just enough friction for the thumb to rest without slipping and just enough smoothness for the hand to shift without catching, the surface the interface, the boundary between the player and the instrument, and the boundary was in her hand, the left hand, the hand that had held a thousand necks, the hand that knew the neck the way the tongue knows its own mouth.

She tucked the violin under her chin. The chinrest pressed against her jaw. The collarbone supported the instrument's weight. The body of the violin rested against her, the varnish touching her skin through the fabric of her shirt, the instrument and the body in contact, the contact the connection, the physical connection that was the first condition of playing, the instrument must touch the body, the body must hold the instrument, the holding the prerequisite, the prerequisite met.

The bow was on the bench. She picked it up with her right hand. She tightened the hair. She rosined it. The motions automatic, the motions of twenty-two years, the motions that her body performed without instruction, the body remembering the procedure, the procedure inscribed in the muscles and the tendons and the neural pathways of the right arm and the right hand.

She stood at the workbench with the violin under her chin and the bow in her right hand and she looked down the fingerboard, the perspective of the player, the view from inside the instrument, the fingerboard extending away from her body, the black ebony running from the nut to the edge of the body, the four strings stretched above it, the strings silver and gold and silver and steel, the strings taut, the strings waiting.

Giovanni stood at his bench. Marco stood at his. The workshop held three people and one violin and one bow and the morning light and the silence, the silence that preceded the sound, the silence that was the rest before the note, the rest that was not empty but full, full of the anticipation that precedes the first sound, the anticipation that is the intake of breath before the singing.

She drew the bow across the A string. Open A. The note rang, the sound filling the workshop, the sound the same sound that Giovanni had produced a month ago but different, different because the instrument had been played for a month now, Giovanni playing it each day, testing it, adjusting it, the playing breaking in the new instrument, the wood loosening, the varnish settling, the sound maturing, the sound deeper and warmer than the first sound, the sound developing in the direction that the instrument's character predicted, the direction that Giovanni's making had established.

The A rang and Nadia heard it and the hearing was the thing, the thing that had happened in October when she played the folk song in the front room, the thing that had surprised her, the beauty, the unexpected beauty of the sound, but now the thing was deeper, was richer, because now the instrument was not a stranger, now the instrument was the instrument she had watched being made, the instrument whose ribs she had held and whose f-holes she had filed and whose varnish she had applied, the instrument that was, in part, her work, and the in-part was the connection, the connection between the maker and the sound.

She played a scale. G major, ascending. Open G, then the fingers: first finger for A, second for B, third for C. The left hand moved. The fingers pressed. The notes sounded. The first three fingers worked, pressed, produced the correct pitches, the intonation accurate, the placement precise, the muscle memory of twenty-two years guiding the fingers to the correct positions on the fingerboard.

She played higher. D string, A string. The first three fingers in first position. The notes climbing. She did not use the fourth finger. She did not shift out of first position. She stayed within the territory that the hand could manage, the reduced territory, the territory that the injury had left her.

She descended. The scale returned to the open G. The descent was controlled, the fingers lifting from the strings in the reverse order of their pressing, the notes falling, the sound descending, the descent a return, a coming-back to the beginning, the beginning the open string, the string's natural voice.

She paused. The workshop was quiet. Giovanni watched. Marco watched. The watching was the attendance, the witnessing, the being-present for the moment when the person who had come to the workshop with broken hands played the instrument that the workshop had built.

She played the folk song.

The Croatian folk song. The song her father had sung. The song about the sea and the boats and the fishermen of Dalmatia, the song in a minor key, the song with a melody that stayed within the range of a fifth, the song that used the first three fingers in first position, the song that was simple.

The melody began. The first notes, the opening phrase, the phrase that her father had sung in the kitchen of the house in Minneapolis while her mother cooked and the winter dark pressed against the windows, the phrase that was the sound of childhood, the sound of home, the sound of the before, the before that preceded the violin and the conservatory and the orchestra and the injury, the before that was the beginning of everything, the beginning that was her father's voice singing a song from his country.

The melody climbed. The notes moved up through the minor scale, the intervals small, the movement stepwise, the melody singing rather than leaping, the singing the folk song's character, the character of a song that was made for the human voice, a song that was made for the singing of fishermen on boats, a song that did not require virtuosity or technique or the trained left hand of a concert violinist, a song that required only the first three fingers and the bow and the ear and the heart, and the heart was the thing, the heart was what the song asked for, and the heart was intact, the heart was undamaged, the heart had not been disrupted by the focal dystonia.

The right hand drew the bow. The bow moved across the strings with the control that twenty-two years of training had produced, the bow arm working perfectly, the sound production flawless, the tone rich and warm and singing, the right hand giving the instrument the sound that the right hand could give, the sound of a trained bow arm, the sound of a violinist who had played the Tchaikovsky and the Brahms and the Beethoven, the sound that the right hand remembered and produced and would always produce, the right hand intact, the right hand the gift.

The left hand found the notes. The first three fingers pressed the strings against the ebony fingerboard, the fingerboard that she had watched Giovanni glue to the neck, the ebony from Africa, the ebony that was the interface, the boundary, and the fingers pressed and the notes sounded and the notes were correct, were in tune, were the notes of the folk song, the simple notes, the notes that did not require the fourth finger, the notes that the injury had not taken.

The melody filled the workshop. The sound of the violin, the violin she had helped build, the violin whose spruce top plate had been cut from a plank that had dried for seven years in the attic above her, the violin whose maple back and ribs had come from the mountains of her father's country, the violin whose f-holes Giovanni had cut freehand while she stood at his shoulder, the violin whose bass bar she had watched him fit and glue, the violin whose body she had helped close, the violin whose varnish she had helped apply, coat by coat, the amber-red building, the violin whose scroll she had watched emerge from the block of maple, the violin whose bridge Giovanni had carved and whose sound post Giovanni had set and whose strings Giovanni had tuned, the violin that was the work of nine months, the violin that was Giovanni's last, the violin that was in her hands.

The folk song. The melody circled. The melody returned to its beginning. The melody repeated, the repetition the folk song's structure, the verse returning, the chorus returning, the song cycling through its simple form, the form the container, the container holding the melody the way the violin's body held the sound, the form and the body both enclosures, both spaces designed for the thing they contained.

She played and the playing was not the Tchaikovsky. The playing was not the Brahms. The playing was not the Beethoven or the Bach or the Bartok or the Sibelius. The playing was not the repertoire of her performing life, was not the music that had defined her, that had been her identity, that had been the work that her hands were trained to produce. The playing was a folk song. A simple melody. A song from Dalmatia. A song that a fisherman might sing, that a father might sing, that a woman might play on a violin in a workshop in Cremona with the fingers she had left, the fingers that could still find the notes, the simple notes, the notes that were enough.

The folk song was enough.

The folk song was more than enough.

The folk song, played on this violin, in this workshop, by these hands — the right hand holding the bow, the left hand finding the notes it could still find — was the sound of a woman who lost one thing and built another.

She played and the sound filled the workshop and the workshop held the sound and the sound was beautiful. The beauty was not the beauty of virtuosity. The beauty was not the beauty of the concert stage. The beauty was the beauty of the simple thing done well, the beauty of the melody played with care, the beauty of the sound produced by the instrument that she had helped build, the beauty of the bow drawn by the hand that worked across the strings that vibrated on the bridge that stood on the plate that she had helped varnish in the body that she had helped close, the beauty of the circle, the circle from the making to the playing, the circle that connected the maker and the player, the circle that Nadia stood inside of, the circle that was her life now.

She played the last phrase. The melody descended to the tonic. The last note sounded, a sustained A, the first finger on the G string, the note held by the bow, held by the right hand, held in the air of the workshop while the note faded, the fading the ending, the ending the silence, the silence the space after the sound.

She lowered the bow. She held the violin at her side. She stood in the workshop and the workshop was silent and the silence was the silence after the music, the silence that is not the absence of music but the presence of the music's memory, the memory that the room holds, the memory that the walls hold, the memory that the air holds.

Giovanni looked at her. His eyes were dark, nearly black, the eyes that had assessed the wood and the arching and the graduation and the f-holes and the bass bar and the sound post and the varnish and the bridge, the eyes that had assessed every component of every violin he had made for fifty years. The eyes assessed her. The eyes assessed what he had heard.

He said nothing.

He did not need to say anything.

What he would have said, if he had been a man who said what he felt, if he had been a different man from the man he was, what he would have said was: that is the sound. That is the sound of the instrument. That is the sound that the wood produced and the making shaped and the playing released. That is the sound. And the sound is the thing. And the thing is what the workshop exists to produce. And you have produced it. You have played the instrument and the instrument has sounded and the sound is the thing.

But he did not say this. He said nothing. He stood at his bench and he looked at Nadia and Nadia stood at the bench and she held the violin and the bow and the workshop was quiet and the quiet was the saying, the quiet said everything, the quiet was the language of the workshop, the language that did not need words because the words were the sound and the sound had been made and the made was the thing.

Marco said bene.

The bene was quiet. The bene was the one word. The bene was the assessment, the colleague's assessment, the craftsperson's assessment, the word that the workshop used for the work that merited the word, and the word was merited, and the meriting was the playing, and the playing was the folk song, and the folk song was enough.

Nadia placed the violin on the workbench. She placed it gently, the way she had placed it on the display cabinet in October, the gentle placing that was the care, the care for the instrument, the care for the thing she had helped build.

She placed the bow beside the violin. She stood at the bench. She looked at her hands.

The right hand. The bow hand. The hand that had drawn the bow across the strings and produced the sound, the beautiful sound, the sound of the folk song on the violin she had helped build.

The left hand. The hand that had found the notes. The simple notes. The notes that the first three fingers could find, the notes that the injury had not taken, the notes that remained.

Both hands. Both hands had played. Both hands had participated. Both hands had contributed to the sound. The right hand producing the tone and the left hand producing the pitch and the tone and the pitch combining to produce the melody and the melody filling the workshop and the workshop holding the melody and the holding being the thing.

She looked at her hands and she did not hold the left hand in the right hand. She did not perform the gesture of self-comfort, the gesture of reckoning, the gesture that she had performed every evening in the room above the workshop for ten months. She did not hold the left hand because the left hand did not need holding. The left hand had played. The left hand had found the notes. The left hand had done what it could do and the doing was enough and the enough was the discovery and the discovery was the morning and the morning was the folk song and the folk song was the sound and the sound was the violin and the violin was the workshop and the workshop was Cremona and Cremona was the year, the year from September to July, the year of the apprenticeship, the year that had taken the woman who arrived with a broken hand and a duffel bag and had given her the wood and the tools and the craft and the patience and the sound.

The sound of a Croatian folk song played on a Cremonese violin by the hands of a woman who lost one thing and built another and who stood in the space between the loss and the building, which was the space where music lives, which was the space where craft lives, which was the space.